


For a given value of fine

by ICryYouMercy (TrafalgarsLaw)



Category: 16th & 17th Century CE RPF, Historical RPF
Genre: Alcohol, Alternate Universe - College/University, Depression, Internalised Homophobia, M/M, Suicidal Ideation, Violence, happy end (for a given value of happy)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-07
Updated: 2014-04-07
Packaged: 2018-01-18 12:22:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1428322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TrafalgarsLaw/pseuds/ICryYouMercy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>there is realism, and then there is what Kit is doing</p>
            </blockquote>





	For a given value of fine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [glioscarnach](https://archiveofourown.org/users/glioscarnach/gifts).



> for Aisling, because apparently, it takes very little to encourage me.

Trying to explain proper sourcing to Kit is a lost case, really. Kit is perfectly aware of how it works. He just doesn't care, he really doesn't, and he's got Will (and on occasion Ben, or poor unsuspecting first year students) to do boring things like footnotes and reading lists and sources for him. Actually, he used to be perfectly fine doing this himself, but that was in another time and another country (and besides the wench is dead), and he's had to change universities once already because not everyone is all that patient with a guy who shows up late and drunk for everything.

He might have a bit of a problem, he acknowledges that, but he can't be well-adjusted and proper and correct the way Will and Ben are, and he isn't one for doing things halfways, and so instead of trying to be a good person and failing, he tries to be the worst person he can possibly be, and somehow no one seems to mind too much, and Kit really doesn't know why, because he is terrible, he knows he's terrible, and yet, he has somehow found himself having people around he might even call friends, and he has found tutors and professors willing to deal with his eccentricities, because they seem to think he's brilliant enough to be worth the bother, and Kit still can't really believe that, that someone thinks him worthy and valuable, and so he drinks more than he probably should, and kisses people he shouldn't be kissing, and somehow finds himself back at Will's place time and again, at three in the morning, after sleeping with yet another guy he shouldn't have slept with, or at midnight, when he was just drunk enough to do something stupid, but couldn't find anyone to do it with, or just barely past sunrise, with broken glass in his hands and bruises under his long-sleeved shirt, telling himself the beating was worth it for the few minutes of feeling real.

And Will looks at him, and shakes his head, and tells him he's courting death, and of course Kit is, because what else is there to do for someone like him. He's been a dead man walking right from the start, and it's all he's ever known. People like him die young, of drugs or aids or poverty or any combination of the three, and that was the eighties and nineties, and today things are different, but the stories haven't changed, and people like Kit always die in the stories, sacrificed for people like Will and Ben, for real people with real lives, not people like Kit, with no hopes or dreams beyond going down in flames.

And still, Kit doesn't have the courage to just end it right then and there, and he isn't quite lost enough to just give up, so he goes back to Will, night after night, for bandaids and painkillers and orange juice, and Will doesn't seem to mind.

*** 

And then, one night, after a particularly bad class, and a particularly terrible argument with a theology student about Catull, of all things, Kit is out drinking again, and he knows it's a terrible idea, and he should not be here, and he shouldn't be starting fights, but he really isn't in the right frame of mind to even care, it's all falling apart anyways, and he's twenty-five already, and he should be dead by all rights, people like him don't get to live to older than thirty, and even that's a stretch, and so he's just hoping that tonight will be the last time. And he thinks he's gotten lucky for about a second when someone walks up to him and just. Punches him in the face, without any explanation whatsoever.

He's quick to revise his opinion when his attacker hands him a handkerchief, and then grabs his hand to drag him out of the bar. He doesn't get a good look at him until the next streetlight, and when he realises it's Ben, of all people, he tries to run. Which, of course, Ben being pretty experienced in dealing with university kids who just don't know how to cope anymore, doesn't work. They end up fighting, but Kit is too drunk and too exhausted to be getting anywhere, and it's only a moment or two before Ben starts dragging him through the streets again, and it takes another few moments before Kit realises where they are. And he's always hated that about the city, that things are so close together if you know your way around, and they're and the A&E before Kit can gather his wits enough to protest, and Ben sits him down, and finds a nurse to inform that he's accidentally broken Kit's nose, and maybe Kit's got a concussion, too, and then there's some shuffling, and someone poking at Kit's nose, and shining a light in his eyes, and then some more poking him, and asking questions about his name and what day it is, and then he can go home, with a bit of tape over his nose, some painkillers, and the demand that he do not sleep until he sobered up.

They don't get a taxi, and it's too late for any of the buses, so they walk, hand in hand, in absolute quiet, through the pre-dawn city, and Kit doesn't understand what's going on anymore, what Ben is doing, what has just happened.

"Will called me, he was worried about you," Ben finally says, while they are waiting for a streetlight to turn green.

Kit doesn't reply.

"Are you actually trying to get killed?" Ben asks a few hundred metres further, when they are almost at Will's flat.

Kit shrugs at that. He can't really explain to Ben that no, he isn't trying to get killed. He just doesn't see the point of trying not to get killed, not when he's only about five years left to live, and nothing interesting or remarkable to show for so far. Getting killed in a bar brawl would make the headlines at least, and that's something.

 ***

Ben sighs, but doesn't say anything else. Instead, he fishes a key from under his shirt, and unlocks the door to the terrible high-rise that someone deemed suitable as student housing. Kit doesn't live here, but Ben and Will do. Kit theoretically still lives a few hours away, with parents that he never talks to anymore.

The church bells across the river ring out six o'clock, and the door to Will's rooms is open, and there's soft music playing behind the door. Will is standing in the kitchen barefoot and in shorts, making tea and toast. He's humming along to the radio, and seems entirely too awake for someone who apparently just spent the entire night awake and worried.  
Kit is sat down on a chair, and there's a glass of orange juice, a cup of coffee, two paracetamol and two slices of toast set down in front of him.

"Eat," Ben tells him, and Kit can't find the strength to argue for once. He eats breakfast without ever looking up, and it's strangely quiet for a while, before Ben speaks again.

"We were worried," he says. It's almost a question, and it seems Ben isn't entirely certain if it's a question he wants to be asking.

Kit nods. There is nothing he can add to that.

"Do you want to die," Will finally asks him, voice as calm as can be, no accusation or worry in his tone.

Kit manages not to sigh. No, of course not, no one wants to die. But some people simply have to. He doesn't say that. He couldn't say it to Ben, and he can't say it to Will, who is still so incredibly happy about finally going to university.

It's quiet for a moment.

*** 

"Do you want to live?" Ben finally asks.

"I think so?" It comes out as more of a question than Kit wanted it to be, but it's not as though it mattered. It's still one of the first times that Kit has been asked something like this as though the person asking was actually interested in his answer, and he's too tired to make it a more convincing lie.

"You think so?" Will echoes. "Why would you not?"

And Kit just gives up. Of course they won't understand. How could they. "It doesn't really matter if I want to or not, does it?" he says, staring at the table and wishing himself far, far away.

"Why?" Ben asks, once that it's become clear that Will isn't going to say anything.

"Why? Because I'll be dead before I reach thirty anyways, might as well stop trying and save myself the effort. Seriously, you'd think you guys grew up in some sort of paradise alternative universe. Can we stop talking about this now?"

"Are you sick?" Will asks, long after the silence has reached an uncomfortable length.

Kit drops his head onto the table, not even realising the pain it causes. It can't help with the concussion, but that's about the least of his problems right now.

"No, I'm not sick. I'm just not as fucking stupid as you people seem to think I am. Come on, people like me don’t grow old. And if we do, we get to be lonely and useless and a bad example of why we shouldn't grow old. You ever actually gone outside? Every fucking street has some fucked up poster of how people like me don't grow old, and how if you just avoid touching any of us without some sort of latex barrier, then you still might, and it's all because they care so much about us, and everything's got to be fucking pink, and it's always about pride and free love, and no one every talks about how much it sucks, having the best role model you get some singer who's old as balls and still single, and who's lost most of his friends to aids, of all things, and you sit here and ask me if I want to live, and of course I want to fucking live, but I won't ever get to, because no one in this fucking city can stop themselves from reminding me that I shouldn't, that I'm a fucking abomination, that I'm going to die of various new and creative diseases, and that no one should get too close to me, because I'm not like real people, I'm dangerous, I'm,"

There's a crash, and Kit realises that at some point of his rant, he's started shouting, and he's standing, and there's tears on his face, and his hands hurt where his nails are digging into his palms.

And Ben is standing across from him, anger clearly written in his face, fists on his hips, shoulders drawn back, as though he was getting ready for a fight. Will is standing a bit further away, less angry, but about equally defeated looking as Kit feels.

"And you somehow think this is easy for everyone else?" Ben starts, louder than Kit has ever heard him speak. "You think it's easy to see you destroy yourself, because you're a shit for brains bastard with no understanding of human emotion whatsoever, and no understanding of history, and no imagination, and absolutely no sense of perspective? I would punch you again, if I could trust that it wouldn't kill you, you fucking," and here he breaks off, shaking his head, an oddly helpless gesture amidst all that anger.

Kit doesn't care. "Oh, yes, it must be so difficult for you, having to watch someone die, how terrible for you, but let's be real, it's not as though any of that would affect you. You'll get to live and be happy and have a shitty house with a shitty garden and a fucking picket fence, and you'll go marry your fucking highschool girlfriend, and then have two point six adorable children, and you get your fucking happy end, you get your princess, and everything will be fine and dandy, and it won't be long before you forget about me, because that's all that ever happens, people like me die, and people like you forget about us, because that's all we're good for, dying so that all the heroic heterosexuals around us get to learn a valuable lesson about prejudice, and then they can forget about us, because we're not interesting when we're not dying, and seriously, can we fucking drop this fucking subject, before, before," he chokes on his tears, can't really finish that sentence, because what else is there to say. It's too late, and they've seen him fall apart, they're just going to leave, and never come back, and he gets to pack his bags and try to find another university willing to put up with him, and another city to die in.

It's eerily quiet for a short moment, before Will finally speaks up, his voice low and threatening and disbelieving. "That's your entire fucking problem? That you're fucking gay? What the fuck kind of fucking backwards world do you even fucking live in, you fucking fuckwit? You think you're the only fucking gay boy at a university with several fucking thousand students? Fuck's sake, you've got to have had those shitty biology classes just like every-fucking-one else, you fucking twatwaffle. One in every fucking ten people. Ten percent of the fucking population of this fucking country. And you sit here whining about dying tragic and alone? What the fuck, did you get lost in the nineties and never found your way back out? We're here, we're queer, and we write our own damn stories, and if you want to fucking die out there, from a terminal case of being a dicksplotch with no damn brain left, that's your fucking choice, and you're free to make it, but some of us are actually trying to live here, and it's not our fucking fault that you've got issues enough to drown a fucking dolphin in, you fucking arsehat."

There is something strangely comforting about the fact that someone has finally managed to finish a sentence. And then what Will actually said, amidst all the cursing, hits Kit, and he decides that now is definitively not the time to try and remain upright. He manages to collapse almost gracefully, and without hurting himself too badly. He's openly crying by now, and it would be almost embarrassing, if he had any capability for embarrassment left. Instead he's sobbing, and trying not to seem too much like a helpless, useless kid.  
There is someone holding him, two someones, actually. And Kit doesn't know what to do with that information, how to handle people who don't immediately recoil once they realise that there is no good person hiding behind Kit's terribleness. So he sits there and lets himself be held, because there is nothing else he can do.

"You should maybe talk about this to someone," Ben finally suggests, voice brittle and uncertain, but not angry anymore.

Kit doesn't know if he can do that. Or if someone would actually ever be willing to listen to him, but he can't really articulate that, not right now.

"And you clearly need better role models. I have dance class tonight, if you want to come along?" Will says, forced cheerfulness in his voice.

And of course Will would go to dance class. And of course it would be a gay dance class. Because really, Will would pick the one sport program on campus that made the least possible sense, had the most gaudy possible flyers and was in the weirdest time slot possible. Kit starts giggling.

"Dance class? Why don't you just get a room instead?" Ben asks, halfways between incredulous and amused, and giggling a bit too hard to speak clearly.

And then Will manages about half of an annoyed protest about how that wasn't what he had meant, before he is laughing as well.

Kit is still pretty far from fine, but seeing as he's currently being crushed by two laughing fools who keep teasing each other about who has the more terrible crush on him, he thinks that maybe, one day, he might get there.


End file.
